To wonder why more parents don't encourage daughters to freeze eggs?

a sort of 'freeze your future carers' scenario?

Also I wonder how the kid born yesterday? will feel, knowing they could have been born in the 90's instead of being on ice for 30 odd years......

Well said

Turn it the other way - why didn’t you ask your parents to pay for you to feeze your eggs instead of buying you a flat or paying for your wedding? Or maybe as well.
i imagine it wasn’t something they even thought about.
Surely also with no deposit to save for or mortgage to pay, it’s something you could have paid for for yourself anyway.
You are very privileged to have the above, and even though it sounds like that’s the norm in circles you move in, you do sound very entitled.
Although maybe this is just a stealth thread anyway

I know you are seeing this as a "Brave New World" scenario, but if we significantly extend healthy lifespans, is this actually a terrible thing, to have this option?

Yes, but I could imagine having a 27 year old daughter who has years of career - establishing to do, no partner, and who wants kids someday, and making the offer to pay for egg freezing. I kind of wish it had been an option when I was that age.

I don’t have daughters so can’t mentally put myself in that position but I don’t think that you’d look at your child at the age of 18 and think grandchildren and think what if she can’t have children without intervention I know let’s offer to freeze her eggs. I imagine that even if you did offer it the daughter would say that she’d rather have a holiday, a car, a flat or almost anything else (assuming that the parents are in the position financially to do so)
Sadly you can’t change time for yourself let alone for your children as much as you might wish you could

Until very, very recently, success rate for egg freezing was very poor, and I don't think the general population realises how quickly that has changed.

It's also one of those things that isn't urgent until the window of opportunity has passed. In retrospect, I kind of wish I'd done it!

People on mumsnet generally don’t need it obviously!!! The majority here sound judgmental and not very thoughtful. My daughter is 33 and hasn’t met anyone she wants to settle down with yet. Her career has meant moving around a lot. She met someone recently who has been through hell trying to conceive and she urged my daughter to freeze her eggs. Females have a relatively short fertility window whereas buying a house can be delayed and renting is ok too! I don’t think the questioner deserved the pile on. You’re lucky to have had kids and many of you have assumed that everyone in their thirties have found their life partners

I’m in the middle of ivf myself (probably due to old eggs) but totally disagree with what you are suggesting. Lots of women choose not to have kids . Why make the assumption an 18 year old will want them ? Or will need IVF anyway as most people don’t ? It’s so invasive and expensive and not to be taken lightly, especially when there is not a great chance of success with frozen eggs.

I have never wanted kids... expressed that as a child myself. So if my parents had said about me freezing my eggs, I would have told them to fucking stroll on.

I can see a future in which women ho can afford it freeze their eggs at 21, work at their career until the age of 55 and then “retire” to have babies.

I agree with you, Arrivapercy. Apart from that it all seems terribly artificial and a bit 'brave new world'. How far should science go with something like this? Human lives are precious, childless couples can be fulfilled, happy and extremely useful if they can accept it, babies are a 'gift' and not a right.

Because i don't want my daughter thinking its a good idea or even possible to extend fertility indefinitely. I don't actually think its the best outcome to end up with a 10 year old when you are menopausal. Our bodies recover better from childbirth and cope better with the sleepless nights etc when we are a bit younger so I'd prefer to be clear with her that actually, she needs to be ready to have a family when her body is, if she wants one.

I'll be educating her about her body clock and the need to consider and prioritise planning to be having a family in her late twenties/early thirties.

honestly I think its something that people have to take their own stance on. Just pointing out the difference between a viable and a non viable egg.

There's been a huge recent debate on this topic, did you not hear about the ruling in Alabama that frozen embryos have rights and that destruction would count as Wrongful Death of a Minor? Obviously that's Alabama, and it's embryos not eggs, but it's not a huge leap to imagine that at some point in the future frozen eggs could come under the same spotlight, and that some people believe destruction of them would be essentially murder (I don't, but those are potential ethical/legal issues).

@godmum56 can you expand what you think the ethical issues are?

My thoughts exactly. Who even has these conversations unless prompted by your child. It's literally none of your business as a parent.

slight difference in that once the egg is expelled, not dispelled, its no longer viable, whereas the frozen ones potentially are.

@pollymere there are ethcial issues but I’m really struggling to see how this is one? The eggs would
otherwise have been dispelled from the body as
happens every month.

Do women have an ethical obligation to try to get an egg fertilised every month so that the egg is not dispelled?

im going to donate my eggs to be used for science. But if not then they’re just thawed and destroyed. As had happened every month since I’ve had a period…

The moral issue maybe too? It's quite a grey area in terms of potential lives. What do you do with unused eggs for example?

We have a biological clock for a reason. And I fully understand that not everybody is in a position to have a baby at a younger age, but do we want it to become the norm for people to have babies much later than naturally possible?

I guess there’s also an element of feeling like you should have a baby because your parents paid for it and your eggs will go to waste, even if you don’t even really want one.

I remember reading about this in 2011, at this time egg freezing was only offered as a last resort for medical reasons rather than a way of beating the biological clock. Even though I had/have reservations about it it’s more understandable than gifting your daughter the opportunity of freezing her own eggs “just in case”.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1345733/Mother-freeze-eggs-infertile-daughter-day-birth-HER-OWN-brother-sister.html

@Bobbotgegrinch Ok, so I'm a 41 year old man

These words did not need to be said... Abundantly obvious you're a man from the rest of your post! Are you really so ignorant of basic biology that you don't know younger women are generally more fertile and egg quality drops as women age? You had your child pretty young. The average age of first time parents has risen, it's not that unusual that people don't want kids until their mid-late 30s.

Or it come across as interfering and controlling.